Busted! (and my own brush with the law...)

Well, Wassenaar is very safe - but not crime free.

On Tuesday of this week, I was walking down the street on my way to drop off my recycling. There was a police car and a police van parked outside, and I saw several police officers taking photos of a car, and searching its contents. Hmmm. I was curious but went on my way and did a couple of errands. I thought perhaps they'd found a stolen car.

When I returned quite a while later, the police were still there. About half a dozen of them were sitting around the front door. Maybe a missing person?

Soon several trucks and vans appeared - one that seemed to be some kind of environmental cleanup vehicle. Now it was a bit more interesting - something was out of the norm.

A realtor was showing the house next door to some prospective renters. When the prospects left, he walked over and spoke the the officers, and when he returned he told me that they had found 'some plants' in the house. Cannabis.

It turned out that the house across the street was being used to house a hydroponic farm. There weren't actually any residents living there - but the house was being used to grow a significant quantity of marijuana.

Interesting.

Since Alex was away, he wanted me to take a few pictures. Men donned in red suits were throwing equipment out the 2nd floor windows, and others brought large items out through the garage. They put the actual plants in large, blue barrels and carried out plastic containers of chemicals.

I took some pictures from our window, but Alex suggested I get some better photos. I got close and took some photos of all the equipment they were removing from the house (light fixtures, air conditioning ducts, sheet metal, chemicals, etc.) Unfortunately, when I got close, one of the officers wasn't happy with my photojournalism - and took the camera from me and deleted several of the photos, claiming this was confidential and that I couldn't take pictures of his colleagues. Fair play, I'd probably photographed (from afar) at least one of their undercover officers.

It took the entire day for them to empty out the house and I'm sure someone is in some pretty big trouble. Although when I spoke to a couple of the locals in town they didn't seem to think this was much of anything - happens all the time. This is, after all, the Netherlands, where cannabis is 'tolerated' (still illegal, but sold openly in shops, and an individual is allowed to have small quantities for personal use and one can grow a very limited number of marijuana plants at home.)